Writer: Philip Ridley
Director: Max Harrison
Philip Ridley’s modern classic, Leaves Of Glass, returns to Park Theatre this year after an acclaimed run in May 2023. It is a searing dissection of the things we do to – and for – the people we love, and Max Harrison’s production pays due respect to a towering piece of writing.
Leaves Of Glass follows brothers Steve and Barry as they navigate their newly adult lives. Soon, bickering about lampshades and the family business dissolves into something darker, and the family find themselves in a spiral of denial and truth-telling which threatens to explode their senses of self. Ridley has spoken of each of the play’s scenes as shards of broken glass, whose ragged edges interlock at oblique angles and refuse neat endings. The fragmentary and non-chronological narrative is compelling, and it’s easy to miss the absence of an interval as the tension builds across two hours.
There’s so much beneath the surface of Ridley’s writing; generational mental health issues, grief, abuse and trauma all simmer, and Harrison has astutely chosen a modest production and bare stage to allow the piece’s emotional punches to deliver their full weight. The dialogue occasionally lapses into stylisation, which takes a moment to adjust to, but, in the main, it is convincingly psychologically nuanced. When the piece builds to its crescendo, it is breath-stopping.
Ned Costello is fantastic as elder brother Steve, initially stoic but completely believable at every stage of his character’s disintegration. Harrison’s direction has created a painfully identifiable kind of relationship between Steve and his mother, played sensitively by a brilliant Kacey Ainsworth. Joseph Potter and Katie Eldred play Barry and Steve’s wife, Debbie, with courage and pathos.
The lighting design, by Alex Lewer, is spare but effective, and follows the emotional tide; where one scene is gratingly bright, another unfolds in almost darkness, and is stronger for it. Leaves Of Glass’ outbursts of raw aggression pulsate in Park90’s small studio and produce an emotionally purging experience which feels almost unbearably real.
Runs until 10 February 2024
